John Gay

30 July 1685 (in Barnstaple, Devon) - 3 December 1732 (in London). British poet, dramatist and satirist of the Augustan age, today mostly but widely remembered for his ballad opera The Beggar's Opera (1728). Together with Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope or John Arbuthnot member of the Scriblerus Club. Gay's main work, influenced by the classics, consists of fables, burlesques, pastorals and satire often directed against the (Whig) upper class from which he himself hailed, highlighting persistent social and moral issues and resulting developments in 18th-century England.

Early Life

Gay was born into a rich, Devonian family situated in Barnstaple on 30 July 1685. By the age of ten, he was already an orphan and attended Barnstaple grammar school under the guardianship of one of his uncles. Encountering the works of classical writers such as Ovid there, he quickly developed a love for the period and as a result becomes a Neo-Classicist, an attitude later reflected in his poetry. From 1702 to 1706, he undertook an apprenticeship as a silk mercer in London, which he quit to return to Barnstaple in the latter year to become a secretary for his former classmate, Aaron Hill.

Early Career

In 1708, at the age of 23, he managed to publish his first poem, "Wine", under a pseudonym. By the year 1711, he had met Alexander Pope and published a second work, "The Present State of Wit – In a Letter to a Friend in the Country". The very next year, his first dramatic work was published: The Mohocks, dealing with a then-current scare – young members of the upper class, giving themselves the name of a Native American tribe, terrorising the British countryside, confusing liberty with license. 1712 also marks the year in which Gay enters the service of his first patron, the Duchess of Monmouth, as secretary or domestic stewart. By 1713, more poems and plays such as Rural Sports and the Chaucerian adaptation The Wife of Bath, as well as The Fan are published and first performed, and Gay becomes the secretary of the Scriblerus Club. Through his connections to the royal court via Jonathan Swift, he left the Duchess’ employ in 1714 to follow Lord Clarendon to Hanover to witness the ascension to the British throne by George I, where he also met Georg Friedrich Händel, who served as Kapellmeister. The same year also saw the publication of Gay’s pastoral parody The Shepherd‘s Week, which in contrast to the classical pastoral, following the example of Theocritus of Syracuse, portrayed the English rather than an idealized, romanticised Italian peasantry, in a realistic manner in their countryside, with all persisting customs and superstitions. Two years later, he published Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets in London, a satirical poem that nonetheless gives a concise overview over whom to meet and how to react to them on the streets of London.

Bubble Trouble

With his reputation growing, Gay was able to travel the European Continent and make new friends abroad, and his Poems On Several Occasions published in 1720 to great demand. The profits of at least £1000 were invested in the South Sea Company. When the South Sea Bubble, as it came to be called, burst, it left Gay, who had held on to his shares, poorer by £20,000 and once again dependent on his aristocratic benefactors and regular employment, which came in 1723 in the form of the Commissioner of the State Lottery at a yearly income of £120. By this time, Lord Burlington became his regular host, as well as the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, who would also budget his resources to prevent further speculative efforts.

The Beggar's Opera: Lasting Success

After publishing the first part of his Fables in 1725 (with a second, smaller volume coming out posthumously in 1738), he began work on the piece for which he is still most remembered to this day, The Beggar's Opera, which, intended as a burlesque, satirical, novelty spin on the soon-to-be outmoded Italian opera the audience had grown accustomed to, exemplifies Gay‘s societal critique in an urban milieu. As Armens puts it: „Gay’s burlesque and satire point out the actual social and moral motives which impel society to delude itself; his purpose is to hold these improper motives up to rightful scorn and to advocate the necessity of a transformation of values“ (Armens, 10). Gay himself asserted in his second work, The Present State of Wit, that he „never cared ‘one Farthing’ either for Whig or Tory. So I shall consider our Writers purely as they are such, without any respect to which Party they may belong“ (quoted in Downie, 49). Meanwhile, his Scriblerian colleagues Pope and Swift identified as Tories and Pope expressed hope in a letter to Gay that he shared their views.

The Beggar's Opera, first performed on Valentine‘s Day 1728, is set in an urban milieu in London, portraying the common folk in the city‘s streets unambiguously as cheerful, yet backstabbing lowlifes, forced into a life of crime and debauchery by the circumstances created by the exploitative upper class, as well as serving as allegorical mirror images to public figures hailing from their oppressors' milieu, prominently so in the case of Whig Prime Minister Robert Walpole, whom Gay identified as a central figure in the financial crisis caused by the South Sea Bubble‘s burst and thus turned his character Peachum into a caricature of Walpole. Shades of critique leveled against Walpole are also present in Captain Macheath, charming leader of a group of Highwaymen (who is likewise inspired by a figure on the public consciousness, Jonathan Wild, an equally charming leader of a gang of pickpockets until his hanging at Tyburn in 1725), and the aptly named character of Robin of Bagshot, alias Bob (=Robert) Bluff, alias Bob Booty. This genre-creating and defining ballad opera with its memorable tunes sung in English, rather than Italian, opened to great success and would influence English musical stage theater for decades to come and would serve as inspiration to Gilbert and Sullivan in the 19th century and others. So successful was it, that Gay immediately set about writing a direct sequel, Polly, that saw print to rousing reception in 1728, yet was banned by the Lord Chamberlain from performance on direct orders of King George II, who had ascended the throne the previous year. The Beggar's Opera would be adapted by Bertolt Brecht exactly 200 years later, in 1928, as Die Dreigroschenoper.

Declining Health and Death

By 1729, Gay’s health was in decline and he suffered from depression, his life coming to a premature end on 3 December 1732. He was buried in Westminster Abbey and his epitaph,

„Life is a jest; and all things show it, I thought so once, and now I know it“ (quoted in Armens, 13)

though written years in advance, shows his bleak outlook at the end of his short life, that he also reaffirmed in a letter to Pope. He died a bachelor.

Selected works

"Wine. A Poem" (1708)

The Mohocks (1712). Drama

Rural Sports (1713). Drama

The Wife of Bath (1713). Drama

The Fan (1713). Drama

The Shepherd’s Week (1714). Verse

The What’d Ye Call It (1715). Drama

Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets in London (1716). Verse

Three Hours After Marriage (1717). Drama

The Captives (1724). Drama

To a Lady on her Passion for Old China (1725). Verse

Fables (1727/1738, 6th Ed. with additional fables). Verse

The Beggar's Opera (1727/1728, 2nd. Ed. with music). Ballad Opera

Polly (1729). Ballad Opera

Acis and Galatea (1732). Opera

Achilles (1733). Opera

Sources

Ackermann, Sandy. “Zur Entstehungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte der Beggar’s Opera“. John Gays The Beggar’s Opera. Eine kleine Erfolgsgeschichte, edited by Alexander Eilers, Litblockín, 2010, pp. 9-13.

Armens, Steven M. John Gay: Social Critic. Octagon, 1966.

Downie, J.A. “Gay’s Politics”. John Gay and the Scriblerians, edited by Peter Lewis et al., Vision Press, 1988, pp. 44-61.

Fuller, John, editor. John Gay: Dramatic Works Vol. 1. Clarendon Press, 1983.

Meyer Spacks, Patricia M. John Gay. Twayne Publishers, 1965.

Rogers, Pat. Documenting Eighteenth Century Satire: Pope, Swift, Gay and Arbuthnot in Historical Context. Cambridge Scholars, 2012.

Rogers, Pat. “Gay and the World of Opera”. John Gay and the Scriblerians, edited by Peter Lewis et al., Vision Press, 1988, pp. 147-162.

Sauer, Bettina. “Politik und soziale Realität im Augustan Age“. John Gays The Beggar’s Opera. Eine kleine Erfolgsgeschichte, edited by Alexander Eilers, Litblockín, 2010, pp. 14-18.

Warner, Oliver. John Gay. Longmans, 1964.